Graham Armfield 4:32 pm on November 29, 2014  

WordPress Accessible Themes Roadmap

Initial Proposed Timeline

What When
Initial content (3 initial steps) December 12 2014 Published Dec. 15, 2014
All resource copy written Late January 2015
Code library finished Note April 2015
All accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) info published in various locations (See below) April 2015
All new themes to automatically be tested for accessibility November 2015

Brainstorm of Content Types

We felt that the following pieces of information should be provided for theme dev (and others) to help them understand the reasons why accessibility is so important, and how to actually go about bringing accessibility techniques into themes.

  • The 3 steps – the top 3 things to do to improve accessibility within a website. These are:
    • Keyboard navigation
    • Controls that aren’t controls
    • Unidentified images
  • A resources page – “A  way in”
  • The WordPress Accessibility Guidelines – what WordPress defines as being accessible
  • A world map of accessibility legislation
  • Landing pages
    • on Make WordPress Accessibility (make.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//accessibility)
    • on WordPress main site (wordpress.org/accessibility)
  • Why accessibility is important – prose + video
  • How to do accessibility – prose + video
  • Pattern library
    • best practices prose – explaining what and why
    • code snippets – examples that you can use
  • Examples of attractive accessible themes
  • How to make your themes accessible
  • How to test that your theme is accessible
  • A list of gotchas for plugins (perhaps an impostor from another page)

Other potential accessibility reference sections – but not specifically theme related:

  • Guide for writing content in an accessible way

Stimulating Phrases

During our sessions we came up with a series of phrases that were worth capturing as they can stimulate work in different directions and underpin our ethos:

  • Take the onus off the user – A user of a WordPress theme should not have to worry about the accessibility of the theme.
  • Accessibility is coming, it is not going away.
  • Checking all themes for accessibility
  • WordPress will be accessible by default
  • An opt-out for theme authors, but themes flagged as not tested
  • This theme has not been checked for accessibility
  • This theme was approved before WP a11yAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) guidelines were published
  • What’s our theme tagging strategy
  • Accessible icons for themes
  • Automated testing vs manual testing
  • The bonus of SEO from doing accessibility
  • Check the accessibility of the underscores theme and Bones
  • Dispel the myths about accessibility
  • An aggressive timeline
  • An outreach programme

Places that need links to accessibility resources

  • Make WordPress Accessible
  • WordPress.org Accessibility
  • Theme Handbook
  • Developer Handbook
  • Theme upload page
  • Training team page(s)

That’s “finished” for a given value of finished. Return